Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a semiconductor plasma antenna apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
A semiconductor plasma antenna requisitely requires a semiconductor plasma cell (e.g., a PIN diode) and a driver circuit that can drive the cell, so as to obtain a restructuring characteristic and a beam forming characteristic. A circuit technique for driving a semiconductor plasma antenna cell employs a method, for example, a dot matrix method, for driving a diode such as a conventional LED,
However, when applying the dot matrix method so as to drive the cells of the semiconductor plasma antenna following problems occur.
First, the semiconductor plasma antenna must be able to adjust a carrier concentration of own area (intrinsic area) of a PIN diode through a constant current driving system, but the dot matrix method is unable to effectively control an amount of current because it uses a voltage driving scheme, and it is difficult to stably drive a diode cell as a lot of current may changed due to only a little voltage.
Second, the dot matrix method should connect a control switch to all diode cells. However, the semiconductor plasma antenna requires a number of routings so as to implement a connection between a control circuit and a diode cell array as it cannot configure a diode and a switch on chip.
In addition, the driver circuit has a limitation of the number of input pads when connecting all of the plurality of connection routings, and the routing that is used for the cell array is formed of metallic material to affect the properties of the semiconductor plasma antenna.
Finally, since the dot matrix method additionally requires a digital block which can control a gate and a source driver so as to configure a reconstruction pattern of the semiconductor plasma antenna cell, power consumption may be increased.